Thieves steal four tonnes of Swedish coffee

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Two caffeine loving thieves will be able to organize the biggest office 'fika' (coffee and cake) after they used a truck to take more than four tonnes of coffee from a factory in western Sweden.

A total of 18 pallets, or 720 packs, of coffee at a market value estimated to be more than half a million kronor (around $59,000) was taken from the Kahls Kaffe AB roastery in Högsbo near Gothenburg.

“The delivery had been set to go to Coca Cola Company in Norway. The company sells the coffee by the name of Chaqwa and we make it for them. In Norway they sell more than 500 tonnes of Chaqwa coffee a year,” Mats Nilsson, the owner of the factory, told the GP newspaper on Tuesday.

The men had been spotted by two employees when they loaded the coffee onto the truck.

“My employees asked what they were doing there and who had let them in. They said that 'Adam' had let them in and that they had finished loading. Because we don't have an 'Adam' working at the firm my staff suspected there was something wrong. But the thieves drove off immediately after they were caught,” said Nilsson.

But while these thieves managed to get hold of a particularly large haul, coffee thefts are not uncommon in Sweden. One robber was nabbed by police after he stole 156 packs of coffee from a supermarket in Trelleborg, southern Sweden, just over a year ago.

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Swedes are among the most passionate consumers of coffee in the world. In 2012, the average Swede consumed 7.32 kilos of coffee, much higher than the EU average was 4.83 kilos per person, according to statistics by the International Coffee Organization.